The Sindhuratna Accident: A System Failure in the Indian Ministry of Defense

Resignation of the CNS (Chief of Naval Staff) of the Indian Navy (IN) a System Failure:

In the August 30, 2013 blog I wrote about the explosion on board the INS Sindhurakshak, a Russian built Kilo class submarine as a part of the Indian Navy submarine arm and the tragic death of 18 of its crew. My assessment of this being a system failure is now quite substantiated by the ill-fated accident on the INS Sindhuratna, another Russian built Kilo class submarine, which took the lives of two officers, and consequent resignation of Admiral DK Joshi as the CNS. I knew DK personally; we were students in the ASW specialization training in Cochin. A very fine upright officer let down by a failed system. Dr. Deming said: “a bad system will let down a good man every time”.

The ill-fated Sindhuratna was commissioned into the Indian Navy on November 19, 1988. The Russians operated the boat for about a year on trials and weapons testing before handing it over to India. On the date of  the accident the sub had effectively been in service for 26 years. These boats  are usually sent for a half-life (10 to 12 years) refit to Russia or done by the Indians in Vishakhapatnam, depending on the capacity of the dockyard. The major refit virtually rebuilds the submarine from its casing to the pressure hull. All hull valves are serviced and/or replaced and where advances have taken place new weaponry and sensors are replaced. The sub after such a refit is good for another 10 years. The pattern is similar to ships in the mercantile marine where the full term certificate is issued for 5 years (Clause 13.7 of ISM Code) and the ships maintained accordingly. Today most good ship registries as the Liberian ship registry will not register a vessel older than 20 years. However the Indian Navy squeezed out another two years of service from this boat. And finally the active life of this submarine ended in December 2013. Yet the submarine was operating…

The Achilles heel in a conventional submarine is its set of batteries. A Kilo class submarine is driven by 240 batteries, each weighing 800 kilograms. The batteries provide a service life of 200 fully charged to fully discharged cycles or exactly 4 years whichever comes first, and then they are due for change. The older batteries do not provide the juice necessary for running under water, require frequent charging, and emit excessive hydrogen and pollute the atmoshers inside quickly. The chlorine vapors and leaking electrolyte are hardly congenial to creating the safe work environment for performance as a warship (ISO 9001:2008 clause6.4).

 The Sindhuratna's batteries in use had completed their life cycle in December 2012. Lack of planning, and incorrect implementation of a system approach to managing such a vital arm of the Navy is adversely affected by a non-committed incompetent top management (TM) both at the ministerial level and at the administrative level. Even if the IN is projecting these requirements the TM still rests in the ministry where the defense minister may not even understand the nuances of the requirements. Further, interference in the safety levels occurs when the national operational requirements remain unchanged in spite of the navy’s underwater arm being  hugely depleted. This result in the IN pressurized to stretch the service life of these aged submarines with batteries which are a ticking bomb. In this particular case, it is reported that the  Sindhuratna underwent a minor refit over the last four months and it was on its first sea trial or Task 2 sea examination before it could be re-inducted into active service. It was however at sea with these batteries whose service life had expired! Batteries which should have been junked 15 months ago. Has not the IN had accidents or near misses before related to old batteries? 

So the question is why are the submarines being sailed in this state? Why were the batteries not replaced timely? Surely the CNS would have asked for these from the Ministry of Defense (MoD). The Defense Minister (DM) needs to understand the part that batteries play, even if he is just a political head, he needs the administrative organization to explain this to him and meet the Naby’s requirements. The ship didn’t get new batteries because the procurement process of the MoD failed. It perhaps did not take the CNS’s inputs correctly. When repeated accidents occur, the CNS is aware more accidents will follow because the system in the MoD has failed. He however has no recourse or face to show his men as to why he is sending them out in unsafe vessels. Thus his resignation.

A system which is failing needs to recognize the root cause of the failure. Who is responsible for this sad state of affairs? Clearly the MoD. Battery projections for the submarines are not made at the last minute. Naval Headquarters (NHQ) processes these requests timely and at least 3 to 4 years in advance. In any case battery requirements are periodic and well known to a country which has been operating submarines since 1967. The fleet is required to have a set of batteries as a reserve. It is therefore a system failure at the national level. Authorities higher than the CNS need to take responsibility and then the new incumbent should look at the system failure. There is no room for politics in such matters of national importance. If the nation’s defense forces lose faith in the system, then the loss of morale cannot be far away. “Morale is to physical as two is to one” - Napoleon. 

There is an urgent case for studying the system that runs the navy. The resignation of the CNS is a good example but not the solution.